Most days the battle isn’t between good and evil. Hollywood, and fairytales, and fantasy novels have all convinced us that there are these big battles. Good is having to struggle against evil. Satan is fighting Jesus. Raging battles engulf us, and we must be ready, for the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

 

The real battles tend to be much more pedestrian. They are the mundane interactions that can happen without reflection, to which we are so habituated we might not even realize they’re happening. The real battle, the everyday battle, isn’t between good and evil. It’s between good and nothing.

 

The real battles in life tend to be about doing something that inconveniences us or doing nothing. Not that we are never inconvenienced. We’re inconvenienced all the time, several times a day, every day of the week. The insidious nature of our world is that we are constantly inconveniencing ourselves. We do it for those we love, driving around our kids to dance and sports and Scouts, and whatever else, all the while fighting traffic. A chosen inconvenience willingly borne. 

 

We inconvenience ourselves for people we don’t even know, and for things that maybe, don’t really matter. I know that sometimes I have to fight with my kids about what they’re wearing. Now, I don’t care that they’re wearing sweatpants. But I care what other people think about me; so for that, I make them change. Why am I inconveniencing myself, and my children, for other people and making my children wear clothes that they don’t want to wear for people they don’t know? Because that’s the way the world works. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the next step that’s the problem.

 

When we need to inconvenience ourselves yet one more time. When that someone, maybe in our church, could use a Stork meal, a communion visit, a phone call. When someone we actually know and care about needs to be loved on, but we’ve spent all of our patience and energy, inconveniencing ourselves already that we have nothing left to give. When we know we should join a small group to help our spiritual journey, but we’ve over committed to so many things there’s no more time to inconvenience ourselves again.

 

This is the real fight. Between doing good or doing nothing. The real battle tends to be doing something that inconveniences us, or not, and having it mean the world to someone else.

 

This is Christian Fellowship. This is what separates us from all of the other groups in the world. As Pastor Scott said in his sermon on Sunday, if you’re looking for something, there’s probably a group that does it better than the church. But if you’re looking for someone, no one does it better than the Body of Christ. That’s what makes the church so special. We’re not in it alone but with each other. And we’re not in it to see what we can get of it but what we can give.